The Senate Republicans announced just before the close of business on Tuesday night that if President Obama nominates a replacement for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, that person will not even be considered.
Just hours after all 11 Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee notified him that they will not hold hearings on a replacement for Scalia until after Inauguration Day 2017, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that any Obama nominee for Scalia’s seat will be completely ignored. Not only will that nominee not get a hearing or a floor vote, but Republican Senators won’t even give that nominee the courtesy of a meeting. Rather, McConnell doubled down on a statement he made just hours after Scalia’s death was confirmed on February 13–that as long as he has any say in the matter, “this nomination will be determined by whoever wins the presidency in the polls.”
McConnell defended his obstructionism in an op-ed for Wednesday’s edition of The Washington Post, co-authored by Orrin Hatch. In it, McConnell and Hatch claim that they are simply exercising their constitutional right to withhold consent. They also claim that we liberals have no business raising a stink when we tried to filibuster several of George W. Bush’s nominees. Um, Mitch? At least those nominees got a hearing. You’re not even giving any Obama nominee that courtesy, so if anyone lacks moral authority, it’s you.
On paper, the Republicans were bolstered by a speech by then-Senator Joe Biden in 1992, in which he called on President George H. W. Bush not to nominate anyone if a Supreme Court seat became vacant. But as The Washington Post’s Amber Philips pointed out, Biden said that in June, not February. It only underscores the sheer pettiness and tackiness of McConnell and his minions that they are willing to keep a Supreme Court seat vacant for the equivalent of a calendar year.
Apparently McConnell made this statement knowing full well that may have just handed his job to Chuck Schumer in January. On Sunday, The Hill reported that several conservative activists laid down the law to McConnell–keeping the seat vacant for the rest of 2016 is more important that defending the Republican majority in the Senate. In other words–it doesn’t matter if refusing to even hold hearings makes Mark Kirk, Kelly Ayotte, Ron Johnson, Pat Toomey, and Ron Johnson one-term wonders. That seat must stay vacant through 2016–and everything else be hanged.
We’ve seen this before. As you may recall, just weeks after Obama was sworn in for a second term, several Tea Party groups told House Republicans that Obamacare must be defunded–even if it caused a government shutdown. They even went as far as to prepare “defunding toolkits,” complete with talking points, to defend what any reality-based person would consider a grossly irresponsible way to govern.
Indeed, there were enough votes for a clean bill to end the shutdown, but it took awhile for it to come up for a vote because a number of tea partiers in ultra-safe districts threatened to vote John Boehner out as Speaker if he allowed it to come to the floor. This is no different. We just thought that McConnell had more sense than Boehner. Shows how much we know. We already knew that a certain element of the GOP believes that no Democrat in the White House is legitimate–whether he is black, white, or polka-dotted. We just didn’t know they were willing to go as far as to completely abdicate any pretense of being constructive.
Let the record show that on Feburary 22, 2016; the Republican Party proved beyond any doubt that it is a far-right party.
